Geoarchaeological research as part of the AHRC funded Living with Monuments (LwM) project investigated the upper Kennet river system across the Avebury World Heritage landscape. The results demonstrate that in the early–mid-Holocene (c. 9500–1000 bc) there was very low erosion of disturbed soils into the floodplain, with floodplain deposits confined to a naturally forming bedload fluvial deposit aggrading in a shallow channel of inter-linked deeper pools. At the time of the Neolithic monument building in the 4th–early 3rd millennium bc, the river was wide and shallow with areas of presumed braid plain. Between c. 4000 and 1000 bc, a human induced signature of soil erosion became a minor component of fluvial sedimentation in the Kennet palaeo-channel but it was small scale and localised. This strongly suggests that there is little evidence of widespread woodland removal associated with Neolithic farming and monument building, despite the evidently large timber requirements for Neolithic sites like the West Kennet palisade enclosures. Consequently, there was relatively light human disturbance of the hinterland and valley slopes over the longue durée until the later Bronze Age/Early Iron Age, with a predominance of pasture over arable land. Rather than large Neolithic monument complexes being constructed within woodland clearings, representing ancestral and sacred spaces, the substantially much more open landscape provided a suitable landscape with areas of sarsen spreads potentially easily visible. During the period c. 3000–1000 bc, the sediment load within the channel slowly increased with alluvial deposition of increasingly humic silty clays across the valley floor. However, this only represents small-scale landscape disturbance. It is from the Late Bronze Age–Early Iron Age when the anthropogenic signal of human driven alluviation becomes dominant and overtakes the bedload fluvial signal across the floodplain, with localised colluvial deposits on the floodplain margins. Subsequently, the alluvial archive describes more extensive human impact across this landscape, including the disturbance of loessic-rich soils in the catchment. The deposition of floodplain wide alluvium continues throughout the Roman, medieval, and post-medieval periods, correlating with the development of a low-flow, single channel, with alluvial sediments describing a decreasing energy in the depositional environment.

UK Biobank is an intensively characterised prospective cohort of 500,000 adults aged 40–69 years when recruited between 2006 and 2010. The study was established to enable researchers worldwide to undertake health-related research in the public interest. The existence of such a large, detailed prospective cohort with a high degree of participant engagement enabled its rapid repurposing for coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) research. In response to the pandemic, the frequency of updates on hospitalisations and deaths among participants was immediately increased, and new data linkages were established to national severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) testing and primary care health records to facilitate research into the determinants of severe COVID-19. UK Biobank also instigated several sub-studies on COVID-19. In 2020, monthly blood samples were collected from approximately 20,000 individuals to investigate the distribution and determinants of SARS-CoV-2 infection, and to assess the persistence of antibodies following infection with another blood sample collected after 12 months. UK Biobank also performed repeat imaging of approximately 2,000 participants (half of whom had evidence of previous SARS-CoV-2 infection and half did not) to investigate the impact of the virus on changes in measures of internal organ structure and function. In addition, approximately 200,000 UK Biobank participants took part in a self-test SARS-CoV-2 antibody sub-study (between February and November 2021) to collect objective data on previous SARS-CoV-2 infection. These studies are enabling unique research into the genetic, lifestyle and environmental determinants of SARS-CoV-2 infection and severe COVID-19, as well as their long-term health effects. UK Biobank’s contribution to the national and international response to the pandemic represents a case study for its broader value, now and in the future, to precision medicine research.

Predation of sheep and cattle by the dingo (Canis lupus dingo) is implicated in significant stock losses throughout much of mainland Australia. Leg-hold traps are commonly used for dingo control and ways are sought to improve the humaneness of these devices. We evaluated the performance of the tranquilliser trap device (TTD) attached to Victor Soft-Catch® traps for their ability to deliver a sedative and anxiolytic drug to trapped dingoes. A trapping programme was conducted in south-west Queensland where traps were set alternatively with a TTD containing either 800 mg of diazepam (drug TTD) or a placebo (placebo TTD). All TTDs included 20 mg of the bait marker iophenoxic acid (IPA) to ascertain dosing success. Each trap was fitted with an activity-monitoring data logger that recorded time of capture and subsequent dingo activity. In 41 out of 48 (85.4%) captures the TTD was ruptured and released its contents. No elevation in serum iodine levels above I mg ml-1 resulting from the ingestion of IPA occurred in 8 out of 36 (22.2%) captures, which suggests a higher rate of dosage failure. Dingo activity was highest in both groups immediately after capture, but declined after the first hour in each. The activity of dingoes that accepted a drug TTD was significantly reduced compared to those that took the placebo. However, tooth and limb damage scores did not differ significantly between the drug and placebo group. Much of the physical trauma may have occurred within the first hour of capture when activity was intense and before drug onset in the TTD drug group. The use of TTDs containing sedative and anxiolytic drugs has the potential to reduce anxiety and distress associated with prolonged captivity, but the delivery of a lethal agent that is rapidly acting and humane may result in better welfare outcomes.

Reacting sharply against the whiggish thesis that religious tolerance was a heritage of the Enlightenment, revisionist scholars have pointed to the many pragmatic concessions people made to tolerate those of other faiths prior to the eighteenth century. While they have underscored the contingent relationship of tolerance with neighbourliness in many important case studies, the historiography portrays early modern London as an essentially intolerant society for the city’s Catholics and a church on the margins. Through an examination of London’s embassy chapels reflected in vicious anti-Catholic polemic, this article argues that tolerance was not lacking in Jacobean London. It additionally shows how ambassadors’ chapels sustained a vibrant and visible form of Counter-Reformation Catholicism in the capital. Finally, it assesses how contemporaries connected both of these issues to tensions surrounding the ‘king’s two bodies’ and the execution of the royal prerogative. While this places London’s Catholics at the heart and centre of Jacobean religio-political tensions, the article concludes that it is ultimately the circular relationship between tolerance and intolerance that is key to understanding why a contested form of corporate Catholicism survived in the very heart of England’s Protestant kingdom.

Colleges and universities around the world engaged diverse strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Baylor University, a community of ˜22,700 individuals, was 1 of the institutions which resumed and sustained operations. The key strategy was establishment of multidisciplinary teams to develop mitigation strategies and priority areas for action. This population-based team approach along with implementation of a “Swiss Cheese” risk mitigation model allowed small clusters to be rapidly addressed through testing, surveillance, tracing, isolation, and quarantine. These efforts were supported by health protocols including face coverings, social distancing, and compliance monitoring. As a result, activities were sustained from August 1 to December 8, 2020. There were 62,970 COVID-19 tests conducted with 1435 people testing positive for a positivity rate of 2.28%. A total of 1670 COVID-19 cases were identified with 235 self-reports. The mean number of tests per week was 3500 with approximately 80 of these positive (11/d). More than 60 student tracers were trained with over 120 personnel available to contact trace, at a ratio of 1 per 400 university members. The successes and lessons learned provide a framework and pathway for similar institutions to mitigate the ongoing impacts of COVID-19 and sustain operations during a global pandemic.

The East Kunlun Orogen (EKO) is the NW part of the Central China Orogenic Belt, which records the evolutionary history of the Proto- and Palaeo-Tethys Oceans from the Cambrian to the Triassic. An Early Palaeozoic eclogite belt has been recognized in recent years, which extends discontinuously for ∼500 km as three eclogite-bearing terranes. In this study, we report an integrated study of zircon grains from mica-schists accompanying the eclogites, in terms of mineral inclusions, U–Pb age systematics and P–T conditions. The presence of coesite is identified, as inclusions within the metamorphic domain of zircons, which provides unambiguous evidence for subducted terrigenous clastic rocks of the Proto-Tethys Ocean exhumed from coesite-forming depths. U–Pb dating of the metamorphic zircons yields a concordia age of 426.5 ± 0.88 Ma, which is likely to be the time of ultrahigh-pressure metamorphism in the Kehete terrane. P–T calculations suggest that metapelite may have experienced a clockwise P–T path with peak P/T conditions of 685 ± 41 °C and >28 kbar, and equilibrated at 482–566 °C and 5.6–8.9 kbar during subsequent exhumation. The high-pressure – ultrahigh-pressure (HP-UHP) metamorphic belt within the EKO may have formed by collision between the Qaidam Block and the South Kunlun Block, as a consequence of the closure of the Proto-Tethys Ocean.

AGB stars play a major role in the chemical evolution of the galaxies. It thus is important to establish reliable photometric selection criteria to count them, especially AGB stars at the last stages of AGB evolution like OH/IR stars. Here, we have identified about 1500 OH/IR stars and 500 YSOs with methanol masers, in all major mid– and far–infrared surveys (IRAS, MSX, AKARI, WISE, GLIMPSE, and Hi–Gal). We show that AGB stars with high mass-loss rates cannot be disentagled from YSOs with only mid–infrared photometry; far–infrared photometry is essential. In the region observed by GLIMPSE, we show that the proportion of AGB stars has been severely underestimated in previous works: about 70% of “intrinsically” red objects in GLIMPSE are AGB stars rather than YSOs.

The powder-bed laser additive manufacturing (AM) process is widely used in the fabrication of three-dimensional metallic parts with intricate structures, where kinetically controlled diffusion and microstructure ripening can be hindered by fast melting and rapid solidification. Therefore, the microstructure and physical properties of parts made by this process will be significantly different from their counterparts produced by conventional methods. This work investigates the microstructure evolution for an AM fabricated AlSi10Mg part from its nonequilibrium state toward equilibrium state. Special attention is placed on silicon dissolution, precipitate formation, collapsing of a divorced eutectic cellular structure, and microstructure ripening in the thermal annealing process. These events alter the size, morphology, length scale, and distribution of the beta silicon phase in the primary aluminum, and changes associated with elastic properties and microhardness are reported. The relationship between residual stress and silicon dissolution due to changes in lattice spacing is also investigated and discussed.